She didn’t mean to fall asleep.
She meant to drive home, to catch her parents before they went to bed and tell them the exciting news.
They’d proven—something. She still wasn’t clear on the full scope of it, but she was positive that the fungus could communicate with people. To test the theory, she’d told Dr. Breedlove to ask the fungus if it knew any songs. Lindy shivered when the doctor repeated the words back to her.
And am I born to die
To lay this body down
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown
Soon as from Earth I go
What will become of me
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my fortune be
A land of deepest shade
Unpierced by human thought
The dreary region of the dead
Where all things are forgot
“I’ve never heard that song before,” she said, eyes wide, voice cracking. “Did I make it up?”
“No,” said Lindy. “It learned the song from me.”
They’d worked into the dark, rainy hours of the morning, asking questions and getting semblances of response. Through trial and error, they learned to ask better questions, and the answers grew fuller, more complete. It was three o’clock when Lindy finally climbed, exhausted but gratified, into Roger’s rusty pickup.
The road was slick with rain, and a dense fog shrouded the landscape. There was country music playing on the radio, the sweet, wet scent of fallen leaves rushing through the cracked window. She didn’t mean to fall asleep.
She floated in a tepid, gray vastness. Directionless, like a fetus in the womb. No sense of up or down. Just turning and bobbing and floating.
There was no pain, no memory. None but the most subconscious of emotions, lacking in complexity and reverberating through her like waves of sound. Unprocessed. Unquestioned. Unjudged. A land of deepest shade.
There were no dreams. No vivid, whimsical wonderland dreams and no horrid, aching nightmares. There was nothing but a cold, numb sense of waiting. Unpierced by human thought.
A few times she might have heard people talking, but the sound was warbled, as if coming from underwater.
“Comatose,” they might have said, and “uncertain,” and “wait and see.”
Nothing made any sense. She reached out to touch them, to comfort them, but there was no touch or comfort in the grayness and the current carried her away from the sounds of sorrow and brokenness and she floated.
There was no way of knowing how long the world had been gray. There was, now and then, a fleeting feeling of permanence, or perpetuity. That everything always had been and always would be nothing. Where all things are forgot.
The grayness was all around her, dragging her under even in this rare moment of quasi-lucidity. A fuzziness against her fingertips, but far, far away, as if her arm were a power line pulsing with signals from across a vast, gray continent.
Mycelium.
The word emerged in her mind, dredged up from distant, buried memories of before the nothing. The talking noises droned on, but she ignored them, training what little focus she had on the connection with the fungus. What is happening to me? she asked.
The response came to her in a series of words. Accident. Brain trauma. Hospital. Coma. Reformatting.
Sensation focused and blurred, neared and fled, clarity clinging to a rope swing, woven of mycelial threads, swaying to and fro. There were dreamy patches of color, snatches of conversation. Listen, the mycelium told her.
“Don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”
“Capable of deciphering our thoughts. Maybe it will transmit messages back and forth.”
“Will it bring her out of the coma?”
“I don’t know.”
“Might be conscious.”
“Nothing to lose.”
Speak, said the fungus.
I’m here, she thought. I can hear you.
And then, the drawing out feeling. The message siphoned from her as the clarity pendulum swung away, leaving nothing but the nothing in its wake.
A chill. A beeping. Voices.
“It’s been two weeks.”
“But she’s in there, conscious, she spoke, I heard it.”
“We all did.”
She sang to herself in the grayness.
Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall.
If I can’t have my Shady Grove, I’ll have no one at all.
“Did you hear that?”
“She’s singing.”
“I heard it, too.”
“Are you still there, Lindy?”
Yes.
“Come back to us, sweetheart.”
Dad?
“Yes, it’s me. We miss you.”
The rope swung toward her, its soft white fibers twisting round and round, bringing with it the transient lucidity. She was determined to grasp it this time. I’m trying.
Dad said, “You know, Treva submitted a paper about the fungus you found to Experimental Mycology. Tell her what you named the fungus, Treva.”
“I named it pleurotis lindyi. After the young woman who discovered it,” Dr. Breedlove said.
*No. It discovered me. It should have its own name… *
I thought of one, before…
She fumbled at the rope, grappling for purchase.
I’m coming.
I’m almost there.
“Lindy!” Dad cried. “You’re moving your hands!”
The rope slipped, but she felt something solid below the churning sleep and she pushed against it with her feet. It was cool and damp, like rich, black earth.
I’ll be there soon.
“You can do it,” said Dad. “Come home to us, Lindy.”
Balance came uncertainly to her shaky dream legs. She stood upright, using the rope for leverage. She opened her eyes. The brightness flooded in, and she felt the release of the velvety soft mycelium, disengaging from her hand.
“Its name is pleurotis gnostica,” she said aloud.
The End.
~Leslie Starr O'Hara
Thank you for reading Part 3 of my short story, "Bound for the Shady Grove." If you missed the first two installments, you can find them here:
Part 1: https://steemit.com/story/@lesliestarrohara/bound-for-the-shady-grove-an-original-short-story-part-1-of-3
Part 2: https://steemit.com/story/@lesliestarrohara/bound-for-the-shady-grove-an-original-story-part-2-of-3
"Bound for the Shady Grove" is actually part of a series of three stories I wrote about the pleurotis gnostica fungus and the people who interact with it. I'm toying with the idea of publishing the other two stories here on Steemit, as well. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. And if you enjoyed this story, please follow me for more fantastical fiction and other interesting tidbits.